A friend of mine is currently employed by this company. I hope that by posting the illegal practices of Jason Ripley, the owner of Garage Floor Coating of Mn, that people will choose to take their business elsewhere.
Jason Ripley filed bankruptcy two years ago on about 1.2 million dollars. He also has numerous active, unpaid judgements totaling many hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Jason Ripley still lives like a very successful business owner. He does so at the expense of his employees and by being the con-artist that he is as evidenced by his lengthy civil suits, judgements and bankruptcy.
As an employee of Garage Floor Coating of Mn, my friend grinds concrete floors and then applies a chemical sealant.in the first days of August, my friend was working in an underground garage of an apartment building along with two other employees. They were using a gas generator to power a pressure washer. The ventilation was inadequate and my friend and his two fellow employees were overcome by carbon monoxide fumes. All three were transported to North Memorial Hospital. One of the guys was placed in a hyperbaric chamber. They were quite ill.
It's now been 15 months and the hospital is still billing my friend. Jason Ripley told the hospital that this was not a work-related injury. The truth is Jason Ripley and Garage Floor Coating of Mn did not have any workers compensation insurance. He was also not self-insured according to the State of Minnesota. He did purchase insurance right after this incident according to the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry. But the employees are left to deal with the hospital bill because Jason Ripley will not report the matter to the state compensation fund because he would then be liable for the bill along with the penalties for not carrying insurance. But this is nothing compared to what Jason Ripley did this August.
In August, my friend was working with his two fellow workers. They stopped to fuel the company truck. The employee who pumped the gas accidentally put about 5 gallons of unleaded gas in a diesel truck. Realizing his mistake he changed the pump and continued fueling with diesel fuel. But the unleaded gas eventually damaged the fuel injectors. Jason Ripley was furious! The repair was $3000 and he had no intention of paying. Jason Ripley decided that he would deduct $375 from my friends paycheck (he gets paid twice a month) and so Garage Floor Coating of Mn and Jason Ripley have been illegally garnishing my friends paychecks for two months now. The kicker is that my friend is not the one who pumped the gas. But, he was the only employee with a valid license to drive the truck so Jason held him accountable.
I have talked with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and the United States Department of Labor. It is illegal to withhold anything from an employees paycheck that is not tax related or court ordered without written consent of the employee. This is blatantly illegal and Jason Ripley knows it. He told my friend that it is his company and no one is going to tell him what he can and can't do. I have also contacted OSHA regarding the lack of proper equipment that resulted in carbon monoxide poisoning.
The state and federal government agencies that oversee these violations won't take action until an employee of the company files a complaint. Jason knows that that is unlikely to happen. My friend is so afraid of losing his job that he is allowing his employer to illegally seize nearly 40% of his pay. Jason also violates federal employment laws by failing to pay overtime after 40 hours. Jason has his company registered with the state as a small business employing 1-2 people with annual sales under $500,000. The truth is he has more than a dozen employees and his sales this year are over $2,000, 000. Because the company does work in other states and sales exceed $500,000, Jason Ripley is required to pay overtime for work exceeding 40 hours per week. But he doesn't. But Jason does drive a Cadillac Escalade and this summer he moved into a beautiful large brick home on Lake Minnetonka which is some of the most prime real estate in Minnesota.
My friend is a hard working, honest guy. He lost a good job in this recession and now he's being abused by Jason Ripley and Garage Floor Coating of Mn. What really gets me is that Garage Floor Coating of Mn received some kind of award from the governor of Mn. He is also featured on KARE 11 news during the state fair.
Please don't support this fraudulent business owner. There are other companies that do this same concrete process. It is a franchised business. Thank you for reading!
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